The generator hums like a distant ding an zich YOUNG SKINS (2013) HOMESICKNESS (2022) WILD HOUSES (2024) Work in @NewYorker @Harpers @StingingFly he/him
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Colin Barrett retweeted
The debate about anthropomorphizing machines is an old one and the Twitter discussion on it now is so much less entertaining than reading Dijkstra on it 38 years ago.
I find it especially fun that he threw punches in every direction so I think nobody can claim his view in their current social media battle.
cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcrip…
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Colin Barrett retweeted
Non smetterò mai di ripeterlo: questa è una delle frasi più belle della letteratura, se non la più bella in assoluto (da 𝘈𝘯𝘯𝘢 𝘒𝘢𝘳𝘦𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘢).
«Scese, evitando di guardarla a lungo, come si fa col sole; ma vedeva lei, come si vede il sole, anche senza guardare.»
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Colin Barrett retweeted
I’d never heard of this book. I’ve never seen anyone talk about this book. The concept sounded too up my alley to be ignored
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Colin Barrett retweeted
John Thompson has been studying the guqin—a silk string zither—and classical Chinese music since 1974.
Here he is with Hong Kong filmmaker Lau Shing Hon performing a drinking song first published 1589 and attributed to third-century poet Ruan Ji: Jiu Kuang (Wine Mad)
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Colin Barrett retweeted
stumbled upon this brick this weekend at the used bookstore and picked it up on a whim and today began to read it on a whim and now I can't put it down why aren't more people talking about this book
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Colin Barrett retweeted
Please please please keep donating to the @sameerproject so that they can continue their lifesaving work in Gaza
The Sameer Project started from a desire to help our Palestinian people differently - with dignity, without conditions, and in a way that returned agency instead of creating dependency.
We continued because the genocide continued.
And now, we are devastated to say that The Sameer Project is being forced to pause our daily operations.
Not because the need has decreased. Because the money has run out.
We are panicking. We are stressed. We are heartbroken because we know exactly what this pause means for the people who rely on us.
Mothers still need to feed their children. Families still need drinking water. The elderly and sick still need medication. People are still being killed in airstrikes and shootings while the occupation continues to manufacture deprivation by restricting aid.
We have always been an emergency response group. When you donated, we spent that money immediately on people who needed help NOW. We did not save it for some predictable tomorrow, because in Gaza tomorrow has never been promised.
Now we are reaching a point we never wanted to reach: we do not have enough coming in to keep responding.
This pause is not administrative. It is not harmless. When food, water, medicine, transportation, and emergency assistance disappear, people can die.
We desperately need you to understand the urgency of this moment.
Please help us restart operations. Please donate. Please share. Please do not let Gaza lose another lifeline.
In the coming days we will share with you exactly how to be part of the solution - how to bring The Sameer Project back. The need did not stop and neither can we. Stand with us…
❤️🩹 - The Sameer Project Team
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Colin Barrett retweeted
Journalists in Gaza have held a vigil to mark one year since an Israeli attack killed Al Jazeera correspondent Anas Al-Sharif and cameraman Mohammed Qraiqea in Gaza, along with other fellow Palestinian media workers.
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Colin Barrett retweeted
❛ Time was hungry – / bicycles, horses, carriages moving / at God's speed. What perforated / the hours but our own machine hands?
Time to clock off with Kit Fan's 'Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory'.
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Colin Barrett retweeted
In 1983, the poet John Ashbery said that Fairfield Porter was “perhaps the major American artist of the century.” It’s not praise you can take at face value—Ashbery and Porter were good friends, and while Porter’s realism often kept him at arm’s length from the Abstract Expressionists, he was embraced by the New York School poets. “But it’s a tempting thought,” Zachary Fine writes. “Ideas made painters and critics impervious to seeing what was in front of them,” he continues. “Porter’s mission was to make people see again.” Fine considers a new exhibition of Fairfield Porter’s soul-cleansing paintings at the Art Students League: newyorker.com/magazine/2026/…
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Colin Barrett retweeted
This article is so accurate on living through war:
"Every simple thing becomes a task.
Every small task takes away a piece of your energy.
By the time you finally reach the work that truly matters, you discover that you have nothing left to give." thesudanist.com/when-surviva…
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Colin Barrett retweeted
There is just over a week to apply for the 6-month fiction workshops ⏰️
Applications close at 5pm on Thursday July 23rd📬
stingingfly.org/6-month-work…
The workshop leaders for 2026/27 are Cathy Sweeney and Colin Barrett (In-person), Jan Carson and Mary Morrissy (Hybrid), and Roisín O'Donnell and Danielle McLaughlin (both Online) ✨️
Free Places💚
Thanks to the support we receive from the Arts Council and to the continued generosity of our Friends and donors, we are in a position to offer one free place on each workshop. These will be awarded to writers who are either unwaged or on low income.
We strongly encourage writers from underrepresented areas of society to apply for these workshops.
for more info on fees, free places & schedules ✒️
stingingfly.org/6-month-work…
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Colin Barrett retweeted
❛ The challenge is always to find the ultimate in the ordinary horseshit.
The last poem by James Tate, who died #OTD in 2015.
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Colin Barrett retweeted
Update on this: I keep coming back to the first story, which feels like a dream I just can’t shake and has much in common with I Who Have Never Known Men. Here’s the opening if you’re curious.
I made a little noise of glee as I opened the @transitbooks mailer. I’m going to tear through this in one sitting tonight! I love rigidly bounded dystopias that become revelatory about the human condition AND push the limits of genre and tight prose.
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Colin Barrett retweeted
A comment last night left on my post about ‘My Fourth Time, We Drowned’ being recommended to doctors in the British Journal of General Practice. So meaningful.
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